Intel: Nokia Was a Wrong Partner

Intel Corp. regrets about working with Nokia on the MeeGo operating system. The joint development did not allow the world's largest maker of chips to enter the market of smartphones and limited the company's opportunities to work with other suppliers of mobile phones.

"In hindsight, Nokia was the wrong partner to have picked," said Paul Otellini, chief executive officer of Intel, at the company's financial analysts day.

Previously Intel said that the first smartphones based on code-named Medfield SoC would be released in the second half of 2011. Unfortunately for Intel, Nokia Corp. dropped plans to release Intel- and MeeGo-powered smartphones. As a consequence, the first Intel-based smarpthones will only emerge in the first half of next year and it is unclear whether they will be based on Medefield or Saltwell SoC.

"We had been working with Nokia very closely almost exclusively, [so] we have freed up those people and turned that [design] into a reference design that we are shopping to a number of companies. Smartphones are an area of intense focus, we have new management in that area and we will be very successful in this area," Mr. Otellini reportedly indicated.